This night, he had promised Doug. This very night. No matter what, he would get to the bottom of this. But to do so, he had had to start at the top, the very head and font of the offending.
When his wife had gone to fetch the children from school, he had strolled across the back garden. He found Solomon behind the pampas grass, past the spot where they had buried Jock. The young dog with the annoying bark gambolled over Jock’s grave. It seemed drawn to death. He ignored it and spoke to Solomon as he dug up compost. Solomon had leapt to attention. Ja, Baas, he had said clinging to his spade and looking at the big A-frame sieve, which divided the larger debris from the filtered, smaller particles. The fine stuff, decomposed leaves, roots, kitchen waste and rich soil, would find its way back into the garden. Would once again become green plants and bright flowers. For a moment, Hektor-Jan also looked at the compost, and saw how the rough bits, the clotted scraps of bark, peel and even white cut-worms and writhing songololos, remained on the near side of the sieve, whilst the rich compost had filtered through in a fragrant, brown haze.
Dis goeie kompos, said Hektor-Jan. In Afrikaans, he continued. Jy skei die kaf van die koring – you are separating the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats.
Dis goeie kompos, Solomon could only repeat. It is good compost, Baas.
You are separating the sheep from the goats, said Hektor-Jan again, a smile on his thick-set face. The wheat from the chaff.
Solomon hung on to his rake. Kompos, he tried again. Kompos.
Goats, sheep, wheat, chaff, Hektor-Jan said. His words would not fall through the sieve. They kept coming back. Hektor-Jan smiled at the tall kaffir boy with the strong arms and the worried face. Such a display of innocence. But Hektor-Jan could forgive the silly kaffir. Of course, he would not know that Hektor-Jan knew. He would be wondering what the Baas was doing at the bottom of the garden, the garden he seemed to have forsaken because he worked night shifts and because there was always something that needed to be sorted out with the cars, in the front garden. Or else he was a sleeping presence in the house that kept Solomon working quietly in the back so that he did not go whistling or cutting or digging or raking in the front garden close to the Baas’s bedroom window. That’s what the Madam said.
They stared at the sieve. Solomon could not look him in the eye. Hektor-Jan peered up at Solomon. Solomon, he said. Solomon’s hands gripped the spade more tightly. Solomon, I need you to help me with something.
Ja, Baas, seker Baas, said Solomon, glad to be able to move, anxious to please. He leaned the spade against the sieve.
No, said Hektor-Jan. Not now. Just now. Later this afternoon. You keep up the good work. You keep sieving those goats and those sheep. I shall come and get you. Later.
And he left. Solomon watched him walk past the grave, and when the new dog jumped up at the Baas, the Baas lifted a quick knee so that the dog fell back winded, too surprised to yelp. Then the Baas was gone around the other side of the pampas grass, back into the house where he lived. The big white man would be dark and silent inside and Solomon would have to be quiet outside.
Solomon stood there. Then he called the dog. Jockie, he murmured, Jockie. And the dog’s ears were soft and he whined and tried to lick Solomon’s hands as he stroked him behind his ears. Solomon stroked him for only a short time. The dog continued to whine.
Hektor-Jan blinked in the light. He seemed annoyed by the light.
Janet let go of Lettie-Alice.
Lettie-Alice, as though freed, stood up. She held out her hand to Janet’s empty mug.
I wash it, she said.
Janet looked into the mug. Where had all the Milo gone, all the soothing Milo. Her fingers would not uncoil from the mug. She raised it for one last, futile sip. It was empty. Even the radio seemed hollow. There was a long silence behind the murmuring voices.
You can go now, said Hektor-Jan.
Janet looked up.
It was Lettie-Alice, who responded first.
Master, she said. Madam, she said. Then she took her radio. The door and the screen door closed quietly. She was gone.
Hektor-Jan remained standing in the doorway.
Janet peered at the brown rind in the mug. She braced herself.
And Hektor-Jan said, There is something – I need to show you.
There is something – I need to show you.
Where had Janet heard those words. Said in the same way. Decisive, yet somehow sad. Tough, but almost reluctant. Her husband’s heart on his sleeve.
There is something – the slight pause – I need to show you.
It was the need. The need nudged her. As needs must.
She remembered.
It was the first time she met Hektor-Jan.
It was in Benoni. Down town. It was in CNA – the Central News Agency. Where they sold books, newspapers, magazines and a world of white paper and stationery. Even toys. Years before, her own Teddy and Golly and Shelley and Sylvia had come from CNA. Purchased to secure her silence no doubt, so that she disappeared away from the ess-haze.
Janet was with her mother. She was nineteen, maybe twenty. They were looking at books, not toys. Perusing the classics. Her mother was loudly berating the paucity of choice, the scarcity of stock, the affront to her academic sensibilities.
Janet was at university. George Eliot was going well. Middlemarch was – Janet’s forehead wrinkled with the effort of remembering, crooked images ran across her mind – Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life was, well, long. There was lots to it. So many moving parts, so many connections, so socially engaged. Casaubon lurked in his study. His book of books threatened to fall from her mind. Janet just wanted to touch the white paper in the stationery section. Leave the books with their ramrod spines, so stiff and sententious, and run her hands across the white surface of the A4 paper, so neat. So simple. No words wriggled on the surface of the white pages. She did not have to pore over the blank pages. They were soothing, not vexing. She would not have to write any ess-haze about any of the blank pages. No ess-haze for her mother to mark and to push back at her and to say, Almost, but not quite, my girl. Now, when I was your age, at Newnham –
But Janet had peeled away from her muttering mother. People passing them often stared, and Janet tried to slide from her mother’s too-audible imprecations and sidle across to the stationery.
She did stroke the blank pages, so untroubled by lines, or by letters that looped into strings of sentences that cut across the pristine white, that scarred it and scared her. She felt the whiteness. It was soothing. It was calm.
But then came the trouble.
The big policeman.
The man in burly blue, with so many lines running across his body. Belt, bright buttons, epaulettes, neat cuffs. Beside the white paper he was a confusion, an obfuscation of stripes and unspoken sentences. Janet could still hear her heart in her mouth. She seemed unable to speak.
First came the Afrikaans, a rumble.
It was a storm of dark sound in the sky of her mind. She was still stuck in the blank pages. Her mind would not move; it was stationery.
Daar is iets – ek moet vir mejuffrou wys.
Then the translation, for the startled miss.
There is something – I need to show you.
That made an impression. That moved her, along with his arm.
I have been watching you, he said. And he nodded across several aisles, to where the afternoon sun slanted into the window, and threw dust into the air, so that that portion of the shop seemed furious, every dust-mote irate. And in the salt-and-pepper storm on that side of CNA, her mother glanced up.
Look, said the policeman.
Mrs Ward looked down.
The policeman took Janet towards the sunshine. It was as though they were about to plunge into a pool of silver fire. If Janet recalled correctly, she actually held her breath.
They rounded a corner of sunshine.
Just in time to see her mother slip another book through the top of her blous
e, into her bra. Then her hand came out, leaving her chest big and square. Her slight mother with a big, square chest. It was ridiculous.
Hektor-Jan looked at her. That is two now, he said.
They stood at the top of the aisle.
Janet’s mother turned to another shelf. She still muttered. Her hands fluttered like birds, and she tried to press them under her arms. Maybe she did not want to steal a third book. But they escaped and alighted on yet another paperback, dragging her mother behind them. Mrs Ward moaned. It looked like she was drowning in the busy dust that haloed and auraed around her. She was a floundering angel in a sea of luminous dust. Her chest was awkward and square: maybe wings would sprout from her heart or from her breasts.
I needed to show you, said the big policeman.
His presence was solid, just as her mother’s was ethereal. Amelia Amis seemed to be choking in the thick sunlight. Her hands did reach out to another book.
Janet could not move. So the policeman moved.
As Amelia Amis clutched at the third book, her hands shaking, he placed a firm paw on her shoulder. His other hand caught her by the wrist.
Dankie, tannie, he said softly.
Janet blinked. His voice was so soft.
And it could have ended there. It would have been the simplest thing. The policeman would have kindly, but sternly, unclasped her fingers from the book and returned it to the shelf. Then his sorrowful eyes, his polite murmur would have requested that the tannie, the auntie – so respectful, so archaic – remove the books from her bloes, her blouse.
But her mother did not hang her head in shame and slide out the stolen books, which would never become wings.
She stared at the big square man, with his hand on her shoulder and his uniform in her face. In the silver light, his uniform was as blue as oblivion and his buttons sparkled like stars.
Who’s there, her mother said. Haughty and correct, her head erect.
The books, said the policeman gently.
Nay, answer me: stand and unfold yourself, said her mother and Janet felt the jolt of recognition of that opening scene on the battlements. CNA had suddenly become the topsy-turvy world of Elsinore. Something was rotten – but who was this policeman.
Tannie, said the man again. He did not remove his hand from her shoulder and he still held her by the wrist. The book was frozen in the fiery air.
Amelia Amis raised her chin. Her words were unashamed, defiant.
Looking up at the policeman, she looked down on him.
You come most carefully upon your hour, she sneered.
The policeman turned to Janet. His soft brown eyes said, Look, lend a hand. If this tannie is your mother, why don’t you step in and help here. I have your mother by the shoulder and the hand. This might seem like a complicated dance, but it is not. This is no citizen’s minuet or tango. This is an arresting tableau.
But Janet could only stare. The big, kind man. Her fierce, small mother. The slanting air and the way her heart beat just beneath the surface of her eyeballs. And the shelves of books, all trapped, spines in lines, rigid and stiff, their pages pulsing with the thoughts and struggles of countless characters and dead writers. Was this a book shop, a police station or a mausoleum. Was she –
Her mother trembled with rage, and spat at the policeman. Peace, break thee off, she hissed and the flecks of spit did fly up in the late-afternoon sunlight. Yes, she dealt her bitter words like blades.
The policeman let her go.
But only to unclip the handcuffs that swung from his belt. He moved swiftly. There were two clicks and Amelia Amis suddenly stood, still holding on to the book, with handcuffs adorning her wrists. She looked down in distaste, then up again.
She drew herself up to her dignified best, and faced the policeman, her heart square, books beating in her chest. For this relief, much thanks, Amelia Amis said and the savage irony made Janet gasp.
The policeman did not gasp. He grasped her mother and led her to the cashier, to open her heart, then out of the shop and into his car. Janet followed blindly, as she had always followed her mother. In a daze, determined not to see.
There is something – I need to show you, said Hektor-Jan again and he came into the kitchen. Janet’s eyes flicked up to the cookbooks on the shelf. Then she glanced at the door through which Lettie-Alice had disappeared. What could it be – Lettie-Alice, or was it the programme for Brigadoon. Or maybe, at last, at long last, it was the crack. Maybe he had finally seen it and she did not have to bear the burden alone. A fissure shared –
Her hand flew up to her face. At last –
He stood before her, watching her eyes move. She looked down. His hand was on her shoulder and, as she arose, she pressed up against its downward warmth.
Are you going to arrest me, she almost said, but he looked so sad, she did not speak.
Come, he said. And he switched off the lights –
The house settled into darkness and their children slept in their cosy beds.
And he led her out the front door, which he closed behind them –
The night was cold. Clouds blanketed the sky. Their breath came in tight wisps.
Maybe there was something wrong with the cars. There was certainly something wrong with the streetlights. They were off –
He led her past the cars, parked outside the garage, an arm easing her through the side door, which squeezed between the house and double garage. It did not squeak at all. It must have been oiled –
They stepped into the dark back garden and he led her up to the door of the garage. Lettie-Alice’s kaya was on their left. Her lights were already off. The building brooded large and square. Janet could sense it rather than see it in the overcast night. Just as she could feel the crack. How it had come winging its way from the pool. She could not turn around, but she knew it was there. Right there. Her husband stood behind her. His warmth pressed against her. Just as the knowledge of the crack oppressed her –
She held her breath; he breathed loudly in her ear. His child stirred deep in her womb. A memory moved too. Midsummer – the start of the year. A dream. Was he going to sweep her up in his arms. Would he sweep her off her feet and carry her inside the garage. The glimmer of a memory made her smile, made her think about smiling and she turned towards him, his name on her lips –
But Hektor-Jan reached past her and opened the door to the garage. It swung away on oiled hinges, silently revealing a rectangle of blackness, deeper and richer than the surrounding night. And there came the smell –
Stap, he said in Afrikaans. Walk. He was not going to carry her over the threshold. She held her breath –
Hektor-Jan nudged her and Janet stepped into the garage. The oily, manly scent of the place hung in the darkness. Her breath leaked from her. She had to inhale. She tried not to, but she had to. Hektor-Jan closed the door behind them –
Janet waited. The air was thick in her lungs. She coughed just as there came another sound. For a moment, Janet felt as though she had turned ventriloquist and her voice had been pitched to the opposite side of the garage. Stolen by the darkness, which now mocked her. Both cars were in the short driveway. The garage was an empty cavern of sweat and oil, and now a disembodied voice. Still there was no light –
Hektor-Jan spoke.
It was his sad voice.
Hoekom, he said in Afrikaans, yet again. Why had he lapsed into his native tongue.
And as Janet said, Darling, and reached out to touch him where he surely wanted to be touched, for she was bonnie Janet, there came from the other side of the darkness a sigh of, Nee –
No –
But was it the Afrikaans no, nee, or the English near. So similar. So near yet so no. Janet shook her head, was she going mad. She was hearing voices. A voice –
Hektor-Jan moved. She felt his warmth fall away from her back and he was gone into the blackness –
Janet trembled. This was so strange. And after the bright lights of the stage and the camaraderie of Brigadoo
n, now here she was in the pit of the garage with her husband and a voice. Was he possessed. And even as she began to hum Come home, come home, come home to bonnie Jean, she wondered where New-Jock was and why he had not greeted them with snuffles and licks when they came into the back garden, his doggy domain.
A match flared in the blackness and seared Janet’s eyes. For a second, the world was bright and the walls of the garage rushed up and at her. The old wardrobes with oily tools and shelves with hammers and nails. Then the darkness slammed shut and Hektor-Jan cursed. She could hear the box of matches and she braced herself, squinting into the great blackness, flinching at the sharp light, which would stab again –
There it came, the swift scrape of a match, but it stumbled to a small splutter and there was nothing. Hektor-Jan did not say a word this time. Why did he not switch on the light. Was there an electricity failure. What was going on. The matches scuttled in the box –
Bonnie Jean strummed in her throat and Janet had the distinct sense that this had become a game of hide-and-seek. Like when the strange policeman had driven her and Amelia Amis home instead of to the police station. He had asked for directions and had followed them to the letter. Then he had helped her mother up the steps to the front door and had removed her handcuffs and had warned them gently. No further action would be taken. But a week later, he was back and asking for a date. And Janet was puzzled, but had tried not to wonder why and before she knew it, he had arrested her heart. They were in the flickering darkness of the bioscope, the cavernous Lido in the centre of town, watching a film that neither remembered. They were too busy in the dark as his hand sought her hand, and his shoulder moved closer. More images winked unseen as she turned to him and met his mouth halfway across the gap in the seats. And they smoothed over that crack with their lips and it was the first time she had tasted a man’s mouth. Then their hands looked for more of each other – and it became a game of passionate hide-and-seek. Sudden and exciting. Warmth and soft skin. Silent gasps and the complicit sense of give and take. Amidst the popcorn and the murmuring soundtrack and the pulsing light and the empty seats on either side of them.
The Crack Page 31